Tech Disco 3-19

Synopsis

The unseasonable warmth that we've been experiencing for the last week is showing no signs of leaving as a well pronounced ridge will dominate the weather pattern for the upcoming week, maintaining a stagnant area of high pressure over the entire Eastern U.S. An Atlantic high will generate a dominant southerly component to the wind, allowing more heat and humidity to fuel this late-Spring like winter right at the official start of spring.

Short term

A shortwave at 500mb is generating the clouds that we are seeing now, and the enhanced lifting from topography is helping for scattered showers to develop across the ridges within the state. This shortwave is nestled within a large ridge along the Eastern U.S. and will gradually get sucked into the tropics as the week progresses.  The NAM and GFS have showers around the area tonight into Tuesday morning, but the 4km Nam and 3km HRRR show the showers slowly progressing east and leaving the state by Tuesday morning. The shortwave also follows this general path, but it will curve South throughout the day Tuesday and the Atlantic high will begin to dominate, advecting warmer air as it slowly tracks south throughout the week. 

Long Term

Little changes come for Wednesday and Thursday, but with the shortwave out of the state, fewer clouds and added sunshine combined with warm advection will help break some records in the temperature department. The Atlantic high will continue moving down the coast, adding more southerly flow and warm advection, but also, a large trough in the West being blocked by the immense ridge in the East will cut off a large portion of positive vorticity, and this cutoff low will begin churning up a storm over Oklahoma and Texas Thursday afternoon. Cyclogenesis here will be rapid, with strong vorticity creating a well occluded surface low in a matter of a half-day. On Friday, this low will move closer, and the warm advection induced from sandwiching between this low and the Atlantic high will send PA high temps around 80 for many spots around the southern half of the state. Although MOS caps the State at around 78, the dynamics are there, something MOS cannot factor in too well. The storm will finally dump it's contents overnight Friday into Saturday, but this is too far range to determine the severity of these storms just yet, but the synoptics  suggest that the storm at this point is transitioning into the decaying phase, leaving us knowing that tornadic storms are somewhat possible, just like those we saw this past week.